29 November 2006

chaotic work space

We moved offices yesterday so things have been chaotic around work. Everyone is still unpacking and since the building is brand new and only about 25% occupied, there is hammering going on outside. That makes it difficult to work. The constant talking of my colleagues and the moving of boxes doesn’t help.

And god help me, I emailed Terri today. I haven’t hung out with her since the spring and I was glad to be rid of her, but then she sent me a nice text message on my birthday and then sent me an email, so I emailed her back. She replied about five seconds later and asked me if I wanted to go have coffee later this week. I haven’t responded, but I know I’ll say yes. I miss her in some ways, I guess. I don’t know. I really don’t want to start hanging out again like we used to, so maybe we’ll just have a coffee and catch up a little bit and that will be it. I don’t know. I don’t want to fall into the trap of hanging out with her like I was doing last fall. She seems incapable of going out without binge drinking and that poses a problem for me because I rarely drink at all anymore.

Dinner with British Chris and Jeff on Monday night was a lot of fun. I take back every negative thing I said about British Chris in the previous entry. Almost. My brother (who used to room with him in college) thinks that his insensitive comments on Saturday night come from some place of poor self esteem and he’s probably right. He must have felt insecure about something to say mean things to me.

Have I mentioned that I’m going to Vegas with my friend from Phoenix? I don’t know why I suggested Vegas other than she wanted to meet in Santa Fe and the flight was going to be too expensive to get there. Now we’re planning this huge trip and the whole thing is turning out to be super expensive for a quick weekend to meet up with a friend. Our hotel is $150 a night (it’s centrally located on the strip, but rundown), the flight there is $250, and tickets to see that show O are $110. The minimum cost for me for this stupid weekend is $660. That’s without eating or drinking. I shouldn’t complain because I know it will be fun and I’ve never been to Vegas, but geez, that’s a lot of money to spend right after/during Christmas. I have a ton of presents to buy and my money situation is so bleak right now. I bought my flight today though, so I guess I’m going.

In other news, last night I worked out with the woman who owns the personal training place that I go to. My regular trainer called in sick this week because she just had in vitro and now she is cramping. I hope everything is okay. Anyway, the owner of the place is so amazing. I really love working out with her. I do this one set of exercises that are meant to work my oblique muscles and the exercise always kind of pinches me and it is uncomfortable. I told her last night about the pinching and asked her to tell me if I wasn’t doing it properly. Her response was for me to just not do them. She said that she has a hundred exercises that she just can’t do because they’re uncomfortable and that we’re all built differently so of course the same exercises don’t work for all of us. It made sense when she said it, but I had never thought of it that way before.

Also, I was really down on myself because I hadn’t been to the gym in a week and she didn’t seem to think it was that big of a deal at all. She said that she schedules in a week off of exercising every three months. She just doesn’t work out for a week and she looks forward to it. She admitted that by the end of the week she looked forward to going back to the gym because she feels better when she’s working out, but she thinks that a break is necessary so that we don’t get burned out or look at exercise as a chore.

She did this one other thing that is going to sound so completely corny, but it really helped me out. She wanted me to give thanks for being able to exercise as I did the movements. As in thankful that my body could move this way or that way and thankful that my strength has improved since I have been working out. It sounds incredibly cheesy, but the way she said things while I exercised totally worked. I asked her if that’s what she did when she wasn’t feeling particularly motivated and she said she tries to do it every single day, no matter what her motivation level is. She said that if you have a mind/body connection when you exercise it makes it that much more worthwhile. I’m just not there yet, but maybe I’ll turn down the ipod a little bit on the elliptical tonight and try to think of more spiritual things. Or maybe not. It depends on how I feel.

One more thing about working with the owner last night. We talked about working out in the morning vs. working out in the evening. She is really pushing me to just bite the bullet and get up and go to the gym before work. Everyone I talk to seems to think that once I start working out in the morning I’ll never be able to go back to working out at night because you just feel so much better during the day. I would think that it would also free up some evening hours and that is also a good thing. Or, if I’m feeling especially ambitious and/or fat, I could always squeeze in two workouts in a day. But first I have to manage to get up at 5 am. Yuck.